Merging two or more strokes into one brush stroke usually alters the appearance of given character. The trick of Chinese calligraphy is to change the structure of a character, without distorting the balance.

Radical changes, such as altering of the starting point of a given stroke, will distort the shape of a given kanji radical. In the the above diagram, the character 高, or more precisely 髙, which is a kanji variant (異体字) of 高, has the 冂 (upside-down box radical) disformed by a change in the starting point of a second stroke of that radical. The steep slanting vertical line in the "squashed" radical 冂, corresponds with the top thick vertical line, forming a visual enclosure for the middle part of the character. The kanji seems distorted, but it is balanced. That is a beauty and magic of semi-cursive and cursive (草書) scripts.

The entire structure of 髙 is "fastened" with the unbriken line (連綿) technique, which adds additional drama and movement.